Category Archives: Bayh-Dole

How (f)(2) saves Bayh-Dole, the "worst bill I've seen in my life"

At the end of the majority decision in Stanford v Roche, the Supreme Court pauses to chide the universities that have come whining to it for federal power to strip inventors of their rights, all for, apparently, administrative convenience: Though … Continue reading

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Why not just say, "We own your inventions to try to make money"?

I have been out collecting stuff in the wild.  By the “wild” I mean at university technology transfer office web sites.  Bluck.  What a slog!  It’s a dirty, nasty bit of work, that is, in the mud and detrius of … Continue reading

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What is Bayh-Dole and why is it important to Technology Transfer?

Here is a short description of the Bayh-Dole Act at a US university tech transfer office web site.   There are many things wrong with the four paragraphs here.  Consider: In 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act (PL 96-517, Patent and Trademark Act … Continue reading

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The (f)(2) agreement that your university must require you to sign

[Updated for the 2018 NIST regulatory revisions.] If you are working on a grant at a university, and the grant is from the US Government, and your university has accepted a standard patent rights clause in the form of 37 … Continue reading

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(f)(2), The Soul of Bayh-Dole

[Updated May 2018 to deal with the NIST screwballedness.] At the heart of the Bayh-Dole Act is the disposition of ownership in inventions made with federal funding at universities. That disposition is intended to provide benefits to the public through … Continue reading

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Freedom to Innovate in Washington State: Undoing the Embarrassing and Deceptive Muddle of UW and WSU Invention Policies

Here in the state of Washington, we are working to free faculty at public universities from state control of scholarship.  That’s the purpose of SB 5247, now in committee in the Washington state senate. Presently both the University of Washington … Continue reading

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The University as Bayh-Dole Privateer

Why would a nation-state seek to claim ownership of inventions made by its citizens?  That is, what uses would a nation-state put its patent system to, beyond those that one might expect of an individual inventor, entrepreneur, investor, company, university, … Continue reading

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Fixing the Flaw in Bayh-Dole with Freedom to Innovate Legislation

The essence of the Bayh-Dole Act is that government, though it supports faculty-led university research, should defer to investigators and inventors who wish to develop the inventions they make. Bayh-Dole does this by pre-approving a broad set of arrangements that … Continue reading

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Finding the True Intent

I have been mulling over this sequence of statements from the court in the case of Shaw v. The Regents of the University of California: The true intent of a contracting party is irrelevant if it remains unexpressed. When a … Continue reading

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Five Questions That Shape Federal Research Invention Ownership Policy

In the industry research laboratories of the early 20th century, the question was, which comes first, basic research leading to new scientific knowledge, followed by development efforts to create commercial products? or development efforts to create commercial products, which, when … Continue reading

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